Mbappé finally explains why he snubbed Liverpool

Speaking in a new interview with CaughtOffside, Kylian Mbappé said Liverpool's approach for him during his breakout season at AS Monaco reached an advanced stage, only for him to walk away from it. He admitted he simply "didn't listen" to Liverpool's pleas at the time, choosing a different path entirely.

That path led to Paris Saint-Germain, not Anfield. Mbappé spent six seasons in the French capital before completing his move to Real Madrid, where he's now established himself as one of the biggest names in the sport. Our own records show him producing 42 goals and 7 assists in 43 appearances for Madrid in the 2025/26 season alone, on top of 40 goals the year before. He's up to 104 caps and 64 goals for France. None of that trajectory involves Merseyside.

What Liverpool actually had on the table

The exact framework of Liverpool's 2017 pursuit isn't detailed in what Mbappé has said publicly, but the key word, by his account, is "close." This wasn't a passing scouting report or a casual enquiry, at least as he tells it. Klopp's Liverpool, still building toward the Champions League final they'd reach a year later, apparently saw enough in the teenage Monaco forward to push talks forward before the door shut from Mbappé's side.

Why he pulled away isn't spelled out in the available reporting either. What his comments suggest is the outcome: he didn't sign, and Liverpool moved on without him.

The counterfactual that never happened

It's the kind of decision that reshapes timelines. A teenage Mbappé arriving at Anfield in 2017 would have landed in a Liverpool side already being remodelled around Mohamed Salah, signed that same summer, with Sadio Mané already established and Klopp's front three about to terrorise the Premier League for the next several seasons. Instead, Mbappé went to PSG, won trophies domestically, and eventually walked into the Bernabéu as a Real Madrid superstar.

Liverpool, for their part, didn't exactly suffer for the miss: they won the Champions League in 2019 and the Premier League in 2020 with the front line they had. But it's hard not to wonder what an Mbappé-Salah-Mané attack under Klopp would have looked like, and how differently the Premier League's power balance might have tilted in the years that followed.

Where this leaves things now

Mbappé is at Real Madrid, Liverpool are managed by Arne Slot and sit sixth in the Premier League table after five games, nine points from a possible fifteen. The story is nearly a decade old now, but it's the sort of admission that reads differently with hindsight, told by the man who stood at that crossroads, in comments to a single outlet rather than any independently verified account.